Reading to Ruth › Advice for families

How to lock an iPad to one app for an elderly relative

A stray touch can close an app or open something else, which is unsettling for anyone who can't easily find the way back. An iPad can be set so that one app is the only thing it shows. Apple calls this Guided Access. It takes about two minutes to set up, once.

By Tara Button, Ruth's granddaughter and the founder of Reading to Ruth · Updated 11 October 2026

Lock an iPad or iPhone to one app

Set it up, once

1. Open Settings, tap Accessibility, then Guided Access, and switch it on.
2. Tap Passcode Settings, then Set Guided Access Passcode. Choose a code that only the family and carers know.
3. Back on the Guided Access screen, tap Display Auto-Lock and choose Never if you want the screen to stay on.

Start it

1. Open the app you want them to stay in.
2. Press the top button three times quickly. On an older iPad with a round Home button, press that three times instead.
3. Tap Start.

From now on the Home button does nothing, and waking the screen goes straight back to the same app.

Get out of it yourself

1. Press the same button three times.
2. Enter your Guided Access passcode.
3. Tap End.

If three presses don't bring up the passcode screen, try two.

Keep the screen from locking

Guided Access keeps them in the app. A second setting stops the screen going dark and asking for a passcode they can't manage.

• Settings, then Display & Brightness, then Auto-Lock: choose Never.
• If the device has a passcode they can't manage: Settings, then Face ID & Passcode or Touch ID & Passcode, then Turn Passcode Off.
• Keep it plugged in, on a stand, beside their chair.

Android tablets and Amazon Fire

Android: app pinning

Settings, then Security, then App pinning (Samsung calls it Pin windows): switch it on. Open the app, open the recent-apps view, tap the app's icon at the top of its card, then Pin.

Amazon Fire: Screen Pinning

Settings, then Security & Privacy, then Screen Pinning: switch it on, then pin the app from the recent-apps view in the same way. Some Fire tablets call it App Pinning, and a few don't have it. If yours doesn't, drag every other tile off the first home screen so the one they need sits alone.

A Fire has no “never” choice for the screen, so it will still go dark after a while. One press of the power button brings it back.

What we lock my grandmother's iPad to

My grandmother Ruth is 101, almost completely blind and hard of hearing. Her ten-year-old iPad shows one thing: Reading to Ruth, an audiobook player with one big Play button. The family add her books and voice messages from our own phones.

Reading to Ruth is a website, added to the home screen so that it opens full screen like an app. Guided Access works with it in the same way. Our set-up guide has every step.

Try the real player on the home page